1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a calendar system, and more particularly, to a system and method for recommending future appointments or events automatically.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of computer systems, there is an ample number of electronic calendaring applications that provide the ability to schedule daily, monthly, and yearly activities, so that a great amount of paper that comprises a single year of a day planner is no longer necessary. Typical appointment calendaring systems contain similar functions for noting different activities, such as phone calls, thing to-do lists, events, reservations, notes, and other information.
In modern society, people appreciate a heightened awareness of the value of time and records of specific events in carrying out their daily activities. To this end, many planning devices and software are available to provide flexible scheduling and reminder capabilities for facilitating access to information on any given day. Some attend seminars to learn how to manage and prioritize their time. Hence, time and event management has become an important role for success in the business community as well as in personal life. Although most existing systems and applications may allow a person to manage their time efficiently, they do little to help in carefully monitoring appointments or events. For example, in a typical electronic calendar system, past events are ignored and do not prompt or recommend the user in due time that he or she should make another appointment, as a kind of follow-up for a previous event, unless the user specifically lists those events in the automatic reminder section of the program. Therefore, it would be advantageous to develop a method and system that is capable of assisting the user become aware of past appointments or events, so that the frustration associated with missing important future appointments or events can be minimized.
The present invention is directed to a method and system for recommending a possible future meeting or event based on a past database.
Accordingly, the system determines a repeat rate for a particular past event, which is stored in a database to remind the user of making a similar event or appointment. Upon receiving at least one event reminder from the user, the past repeat rate is compared to the current repeat rate to recommend a future reminder in due course. To this end, the user must have a past repeat rate in the database for at least one common item. Then, the system determines a statistical number of occurrences for a particular event. The system derives the statistical number by taking into account the probability that a random user will perform a particular event.